


Nova

by ghiblitears



Series: what we missed in space we'll make up for on earth [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Post-Series, References to Depression, Sequel, and all accompanying issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 08:52:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14421849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghiblitears/pseuds/ghiblitears
Summary: A year and a half after the return to Earth, things aren’t as picture-perfect as they’d hoped. Long distance is tricky when paired with the aftermath of both a war and the free-fall into feelings, and that makes their budding relationship a little more complicated. Keith studies the sky. Lance looks to heal.(sequel to Lacuna)





	Nova

**Author's Note:**

> Happy one year ficversary to me! I honestly can't believe it's been a year since I made the foray back into writing.
> 
> Lacuna, the fic this follows up on, is very special to me. It brought me full-force back into both writing and fandom, two things I'd really really missed over the past couple years. It only felt right to pen a sequel. I hope you like it!
> 
> This fic has a playlist, which you can listen to [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/xaniest/playlist/4Fflw1LnmjcnLpbQonEn8N)!

Lance still isn’t tired of waking up like this.

 

He blinks his eyes open to sunlight falling over the room, golden and warm in the still air. Casts his gaze to the half-open cabin window and wonders what time it is. It must be early; he’s still kind of messed up from the time change (even if it was only two hours) and had expected to wake up at the crack of dawn, especially after passing out immediately upon arrival last night. To find himself conscious this early isn’t as much an accident as it is an inevitability.

 

He also wonders if he’ll be able to get out of bed at all. The way his boyfriend’s unconscious form is wrapped around him, it’s hard to tell.

 

Keith has a grip on one of his arms and his head pillowed on Lance’s shoulder. He’s not as clingy as Lance is, but Keith sleeps heavy until he doesn’t, and when he wakes up he’ll be grumpy until he downs a cup of coffee (two splashes of cream, no more). Lance opts for tea, and they’ll bicker good-naturedly about which drink is superior until they run the argument into the ground. Keith will pick something arbitrary about him to make fun of. Lance will retaliate with a swift tug of his ponytail. They have a routine by now, one that’s developed easily since they got together last year. His boyfriend’s habits are practically tattooed on his eyelids by now, burned into his synapses with the amount of time he’s taken to memorize the details.

 

So instead of getting up, he lies back against the sofa bed’s mattress. It doesn’t squeak like the other one did, or dig into his back with loose springs and pointy wooden slats. Replacing the bed had been high on his list of requests when they’d started to work out the nitty-gritty of a long distance relationship (“if I’m going to be here for weeks at a time, I’m not using that thing. It disrupts my beauty sleep.”). It had slid from ‘desire’ to ‘necessity’ after they’d managed to accidentally break it during the first time they’d been intimate. Sofa beds aren’t _supposed_ to close on themselves like that, damn it. Lance still brings it up occasionally just to watch Keith’s ears go pink. It’s like the punchline of a bad joke. _How was the sex? Hot. Heavy. Poetic. Like getting crushed in the folding mechanisms of a rogue sofa bed._

 

Neither of them knows whose fault it actually is, so they share the blame. That way neither of them can use it as blackmail.

 

Lance decides it’s time to get up, and manages to pry Keith off him as gently as possible. He curls back up immediately, tangled in the sheets and clutching a pillow to his chest. His legs are akimbo in the blankets, his feet all the way on Lance’s side of the bed (he kicks in his sleep). His mouth is half open, his dark hair falling over his face like a shadow. He’s probably drooling. Lance admits to himself that early-morning Keith is kind of ugly.

 

The sight makes the whole room light up, somehow.

 

Entering the kitchen brings the sharp scent of spice and the smell of dish soap to his nose. It’s in disarray as a result of Lance’s arrival the night before, with a few dirty dishes occupying the sink and the dregs of what must have been Keith’s coffee in a mug on the counter. In their defense, they’d had other things to do rather than clean, but Lance goes right to the task anyway. He sets the kettle on the stove and flicks on the gas. A ring of flame bursts from the element, brilliantly blue against the stove’s blackened top. A small herb garden occupies the only window in the kitchen, soaking up the desert sun with gusto. Lance had never taken him for a green thumb, but there were a lot of things about Keith that still surprised him. Or maybe, like anyone with eyes, he’d gotten tired of staring at the bland, dusty earth that covered every square mile of the Arizona desert. No one would blame him. The rest of the kitchen is a collage of cupboards and hooks aligning to Keith’s organizational system, keeping it pretty clean in comparison to the still life in the sink.  On a corner of the fridge there’s a scrawl of writing from a whiteboard marker that says BUY MORE MILK. Underneath it reads NO FUCK U, arranged precisely in a series of plastic alphabet fridge magnets.

 

It was so different than it had been a year ago. Everything is, but the cabin has the most physical evidence of change. A year ago they were still adjusting, newly deposited back on Earth and left to their own devices. A lot of what had been left behind when they’d left was kind of hard to look at — they were like anti-memories, lingering forgotten things like unread books or blank sketchbooks or the evidence wall, stuff they hadn’t been able to complete while they’d been in space. Keith had lived here since then, but now it was starting to resemble a real home. Now that they weren’t travelling around the galaxy and stuffed into military barracks onboard an alien castle-ship, he had his own space to fill with whatever he wanted. To Lance’s delight, he’d learned that Keith is kind of a sucker for physical memories, and had made it his goal to give him as many knickknacks and Polaroids and notes scribbled on scraps of paper as possible. The cabin is full of them now; adorning the fridge, stuck to the walls, tucked in the bookshelf amongst manuals and books organized alphabetically. The house’s ghostly past is starting to dissipate, hidden under layers upon layers of Keith and Lance’s new life together.

 

Lance looks out the kitchen window. Outside the air is still and hot. Stone formations carve the horizon line miles away, leaving the rest of the area around the cabin relatively flat. The tailfin of Keith’s hoverbike peeks into his sightline from where it’s parked next to the house. It’s shaping up to be a quiet morning; Keith had managed to snag some time off from his flight tutoring at the Galaxy Garrison, and neither of them had expressed any desire to do anything other than soak up each other’s company for the time being, something Lance was perfectly content to do.

 

It’s not something he’s sure Keith is content to do, though.

 

Lance can’t quite put a finger on it, but something’s changed. Keith is the most passionate person he knows; he’d thrown himself into working at the Garrison once they’d accepted him back (having saved the universe probably helped with that, seeing as he hadn’t left on the best terms) and had made leaps and strides in staying in touch with the rest of Team Voltron. At heart he was still an introvert, but he was also still recovering from the aftermath of the war. Hell, they _all_ were. Lance couldn’t blame him for being at least a bit distant.

 

But something still felt off. Keith’s messages were more frequent now, but they’d started to sound distant. He’d talked about how his students were adjusting to new piloting techniques, about how Shiro had dropped by the desert cabin for a couple weeks before heading off to visit family, about how he’d finally installed solar panels on the hoverbike to give it a totally renewable source of energy. And yet not one word of his messages had been dedicated to how he actually felt. Their more emotional conversations had been few and far-between since they’d gotten together a year ago, and the fact that their relationship was long-distance was only part of that excuse. Lance hadn’t mentioned it, either, but Keith looked exhausted recently; dark circles marred the skin under his eyes and his already wolfish stare could be downright scary at times.

 

Lance is worried.

 

But Keith goes along with his schemes, and at least he’s talking. They’d even taken to mailing letters occasionally, because there was something more intimate to that somehow. Like saying _here, I care about you. Here’s a paper with words on it to prove it_.

 

He chalks the worry to his empathic self. If things really _were_ wrong, Keith would mention it. That’s how he rationalizes it, anyway.

 

The kettle is singing and breakfast is cooking when Lance finally gets company. Two arms slide underneath his to hook him around the waist and pull him back into an embrace. Keith leans into him, still half-asleep, his nose pressed into a spot at the base of Lance’s neck. Lance just keeps flipping bacon, smiling wide even though there’s no way Keith can see it.

 

“Morning,” he says.

 

Keith says nothing, offering only a tired hum in response.

 

“I made you coffee,” he adds.

 

Keith hums again, squeezing him around the ribs. “This is why I let you come back,” he murmurs into Lance’s skin.

 

“What? Not because of my dashing good looks and irresistible charm?”

 

“No.” Keith shifts position to prop his chin on his shoulder. A quick glance reveals that he still hasn’t even opened his eyes. His fingers tangle in Lance’s shirt. “Just coffee. And bacon.”

 

God, he’s cute.

 

Lance abandons the frying pan. He turns to catch Keith’s tired form in a loose embrace and leans in before he even has a chance to open his eyes. It’s a chaste kiss, a promise more than anything, and when Keith’s eyes finally blink open he moves in for more.

 

Keith smiles into the affection. “You’re burning breakfast.”

 

“Don’t care,” Lance says between kisses. “Food later. Boyfriend now.”

 

Keith pushes him half-heartedly off, leaving him to salvage the bacon from the hungry burner. “Coffee now. Boyfriend later. And your face is scratchy.”

 

Lance slides him the mug. “And you’re mean,” he adds. Casually, so Keith doesn’t see, he brushes a hand underneath his chin. Hm. He’s right — it’s probably time to shave.

 

Keith pointedly ignores him to claim a spot at the table, pushing aside a stack of papers to make room. He must have been grading before he’d arrived last night — Lance can see what look like pilot assessments on top of the stack, and takes a moment to stick his tongue out at them. He’d gotten enough of those back in his Garrison days to know how ruthless they are.

 

The conversation dies off as they start to eat. Lance checks his phone, thumb scrolling over the cracked touchscreen with care. A few missed texts from his family, which he resolves to answer later. A notification from instagram that _pigeon_holt_ has posted a photo. An email from Universidad de La Habana informing him that his leave of absence is approved (a good thing, since he’s already left the country). Nothing new besides that. He watches Keith discreetly over the rim of his mug as he picks at breakfast and starts to wake up a bit. He’s engrossed in a newspaper he must have picked up in town, because God knows who would deliver a morning paper to this place.

 

“Is it not good?”

 

Keith glances up in surprise from the paper. “Hm?”

 

“Breakfast. I thought you were hungry?” He gestures with his fork at Keith’s plate. It’s only half-empty, with bits of toast and egg and bacon still cluttering it.

 

Keith shrugs. “Guess not as much as I thought. Sorry. It is good, though.” He fixes Lance with a warm smile.

 

“Speaking of, we gotta go into town at some point. You have, like, no food in the house.”

 

“I have a better idea,” he says. “You remember how I said I found that market a while back?”

 

Lance vaguely recalls it, but he doesn’t remember if Keith had gone into much detail about it or not. “You wanna go there?”

 

“No, _you_ wanna go there. Trust me.”

 

Fair enough. Lance nods, still eyeing Keith’s dishes. “We’ll go when you’re done cleaning the kitchen, I guess.”

 

“I’ll do it later. The kitchen can wait,” Keith insists, and Lance nabs the paper to whack him when he gets up to refill his mug.

 

“I cleaned up this morning, jerk. _And_ I made you food. Do your job.”

 

Keith gets up to clear the table and fixes him with a teasing smile, and the resurgence of their routine puts Lance at ease. He really needs to stop worrying over nothing. There can’t be that much wrong if they can still bicker.

 

Then Keith flicks water at him in the middle of washing dishes, leaving the rest of the morning to escalate into a small soap war.

 

***

 

The market pops up from practically nowhere in the desert — they go over a hill and suddenly there it is, bright displays and colourful stalls seeming to rise from the flat earth. They pull up sharply to park the hoverbike and Lance stumbles off immediately, the momentum nearly making him faceplant in the dirt. He _should_ be used to Keith’s face-breakingly fast driving, but somehow he forgets just how terrifying it is until he’s on the back of the bike again, clinging like a second skin so he doesn’t from fly off. It’s like Keith never left the Red Lion. He pulls his helmet off and runs a hand through his hair, shooting him a glare for good measure.

 

“Do you _ever_ drive at a normal speed?” he sputters.

 

Keith pulls off his own helmet to reveal that he’s not even trying to hide his smugness. He grabs for Lance’s and sticks both of them in the panniers he’d attached to the bike’s sides. “It just doesn’t feel right until I’m flying. You know?”

 

“I don’t, actually,” Lance retorts. “I _like_ not having to restart my heart after a ride.”

 

Keith grins crookedly. Lance hates it when he does that, because it’s hard to be mad at someone that adorable. Makes him look years younger. His dark hair is messy from the helmet, and he pulls a hairtie off his wrist to gather it into a ponytail.

 

 At the mouth of the market they’re overtaken by the sound of voices and machinery, blending and building together into a kind of strange harmony. The way the awnings lean into each other to keep the scorching midday sun off of them and the shoppers dart from stall to stall remind Lance a bit of street markets in Cuba. The bright cloths catch the sun, spraying the ground with colours like stained glass. With the press of people and the lack of wind brings dry, intense heat, and even in the shade his skin starts to bead with sweat. Someone is frying food a few stalls down, perfuming the air with greasy steam. It smells incredible — he has to restrain himself from immediately seeking it out. The whole thing has an air of adventure, a perfect start to their day.

 

He stares down the rows of stalls and feels excitement itch at his fingers. “You were right, dude. This is way better than going all the way into town.”

 

“You thought I was lying?” Keith is already a bit further into the market, sidestepping a few shoppers to make his way down the aisle. Lance reaches forward and grabs his hand, matching pace until they’re side-by-side again.

 

“Sometimes your ideas of ‘fun’ don’t align with mine.”

 

“Yeah, well I figured this one would.” There’s another hint of smugness in his voice, frustratingly endearing. He clearly has a destination in mind by the way he parts the crowd and scans the shops. The bustling nature of the market doesn’t seem like it should suit him the way it does, and yet there’s a light in his eyes that’s been scarce recently.

 

They pass countless stalls of goods — produce and crafts and food and drink. It’s hard to take it all in; there’s just so much and it goes by so fast, with moments to spare between things that grab Lance’s attention. It would overload his senses if they were to stop, but Keith doesn’t slow his pace as they make their way to the other side of the market. He wonders what could be so special about their destination if the rest of the place has this much stuff.

 

“Dude, we passed, like, five stands back there that have food we could have bought. What gives?”

 

Keith pulls them down a corner of the market, eyes cast to a stall at the end of the line. “There’s someone I want you to meet,” he says.

 

“You have friends besides us?” Lance teases, and Keith shoots him a dry look.

 

His question still isn’t quite answered when they reach the stall, a produce stand that sits underneath a wide red awning. The food looks good; bunches of fruits and vegetables that look as though they’ve been plucked from the dirt and stuck right on the display— leagues better than any grocery store. It brings him back to the farm job he’d held down as a teenager. Lance eyes a carton of glossy red strawberries and tries not to drool. At the other side of the table is what looks like a collection of homemade bread.

 

A cry of “Keith!” brings the shopkeeper into view, an older woman with a long braid of grey and silver hair trailing down her back. Her tan skin is partially hidden beneath a brightly-patterned shawl. She’s not particularly tall, but Lance gets the impression that this woman is a commanding presence in her own right. She smiles widely at Keith, her dark eyes crinkling in delight.

 

“Hi María,” Keith says.

 

“You haven’t been by in weeks! How are you feeding yourself if you’re not coming here to shop?” She grabs him by the arm and pulls him closer, inspecting him before casting her scrutinizing eyes back to his face. “ _Estás delgado_. _¡_ _Come algo, Calaca_!”

 

Lance bursts out laughing.

 

Keith pulls out of her grasp, but not harshly — there’s a familiarity to the way María teases him. When he looks back it’s with a surprisingly fond look. “I don’t know what that means,” he points out.

 

María smirks. Inside joke, it would seem. “You _should_ know. Meaning transcends language.”

 

He ignores her comment and pulls Lance forward instead. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself — it feels like he’s intruding, just a bit — but Keith fixes him with that _look_ he has, and he decides to just roll with it. Any friend of Keith’s is a friend of his.

 

 “This is Lance,” he says.

 

The way María’s eyes light up make it seem like she’s greeting an old friend rather than a complete stranger. “I’ve heard all about you,” she says, reaching across the stall to firmly shake his hand. Lance reciprocates even though his hands are sweaty.

 

“ _Hola_ ,” he says. “¿ _Como estás_?”

 

Spanish still feels a bit strange to him after three years without really using it, but her face goes soft when he speaks.

 

“ _Muy bien, mijo_ ,” she says warmly.

 

Keith takes charge of their shopping list while he and María chat. They mix Spanish and English fluidly throughout the conversation, switching more out of what feels right over what’s correct. He feels his whole face light up when she tells him that she’s a Cuban immigrant as well, and she laughs good-naturedly at his excited response. They trade stories back and forth for a bit — María came to Phoenix along with the rest of her family, but she’d moved her greenhouses to a farmhouse in the desert once it became apparent that she thrived outside the city. Their conversation culminates into a job offer once she learns that he knows a bit about farming (“you could stay closer to your _amado_ this way!”), which Lance graciously refuses. She eventually sends them off with two bags of groceries and insists they come back more often, which they promise to do (Keith halfheartedly, Lance wholeheartedly).

 

They pick around the market a while longer, but the bags dig into their hands and the heat suffocates them and they decide it’s time to go back.

 

“What was that word she called me?” Keith asks as they load the panniers. He swipes the back of his hand across his forehead, grimacing at the sheen of sweat on his skin.

 

“ _Calaca_?” Lance asks. “It means skeleton. She was telling you to eat more.”

 

He scoffs. “María’s a worrier. She’s been on my case since day one, and I think she’s called me every name in the entire Spanish lexicon.” He frowns. “ _Calaca_ is a new one, though.”

 

“You guys seem close.”

 

 “Not many people stop and talk to her. I helped fix her trailer once, and I guess she decided we were friends.” He shrugs, but there’s affection underneath his nonchalant attitude. “I mean, I’m not complaining. It’s nice to be cared about.”

 

Lance pushes him good-naturedly. “I care, asshole.”

 

“Yeah, but you’re _supposed_ to care about me.” Keith tosses Lance his helmet.

 

They get back on the hoverbike. He can’t quite get María’s words out of his head — he’d never really thought about Keith’s eating habits, even after their conversation over breakfast, but her comment had given him pause. _Is_ he skinnier? He’d always been lean and wiry, more sinew than muscle, but never underweight. When Lance winds his arms around Keith’s midsection in anticipation of the wild ride home, he’s surprised to find that he _does_ notice a change. While he’s still toned from years of training, Lance can now distinctly feel each of Keith’s ribs even through the fabric of his shirt. He hadn’t noticed when they’d woken up, still caught up in the novelty and excitement at seeing him for the first time in two months.

 

Keith pushes his hands away playfully. “Get off. You’re sweaty.”

 

“Sorry. Just don’t want to fall off your death bike,” he replies automatically. Lance shakes the worry from his head.

 

“Better watch it, then,” Keith warns, and revs the hoverbike. They tear off into the desert, sending red dust spiraling into the sky.

 

***

 

It’s not like they’re _always_ together, even though their friends have joked more than once that they’re attached at the hip. On one hand, they’re apart so much that it’s admittedly hard to separate when they’re finally together. Lance feels like they have to make up for lost time, and even when he’s reading or thinking or sleeping he’s usually in arms’ reach of his boyfriend. It’s a reality check, a reminder that they’re here and they’re together, and all the steps they’ve taken have gotten them this far. But they still have _boundaries_ , like anyone in a relationship.  If one of them needs space, they get it. Simple as that. And yet, it still surprises Lance a few days later when he wakes in the middle of the night to find Keith gone.

 

At first he rationalizes it — it’s three AM, sure, but he could be getting a drink or using the bathroom or doing any number of things. Back in their Voltron days, Keith had been known to wander the Castle of Lions when he needed to clear his head or if he couldn’t sleep (although Lance had thought he’d kicked the habit by now). Sure enough, movement cuts through the wash of moonlight that falls through the window and Lance sits up slightly to peer out at the source.

 

Keith is outside, leaning on the cabin railing and staring up towards the stars. Night has brought a chill over the desert, but he’s still clad in only a muscle shirt and a pair of sweats. His hair, normally pulled up in a ponytail or bun, hangs loosely around his face, nearly touching his shoulders. Light falls gently over him, catching the planes and angles of his form and turning the curling ends of his hair silver. As Lance watches he shifts, crossing his arms to lean more of his weight against the railing, as though it’s hard to keep upright. One of his hands comes up to rub his temples.

 

 He looks tired.

 

Why isn’t he in bed?

 

Lance pulls the blanket around himself and swings his legs onto the floor. He walks quietly across the house towards the door, footsteps soft against the aged wooden floor. The house settles quietly around him with creaks and pops, sharp in the stillness of the night.

 

He’s not hiding on purpose, but Keith still startles when he pushes the door open. It scrapes against the wooden frame, harsh in the still night. He turns quickly towards the noise but relaxes slightly when he sees who it is.

 

“Babe, what are you doing? It’s late,” Lance asks as he joins Keith at the railing. This close he can see the dark circles under Keith’s eyes, how his skin is awash with goosebumps in the cool air, how his hair is tangled with the reminder of sleep. “Are you okay?”

 

Keith rubs at his eyes before turning back to him. “I’m fine. Head hurts, that’s all.”

 

Lance frowns. He’d said something similar the other day, complained of a headache when Lance had suggested they take a trip to the city to visit some old haunts. He’d let it slide — Keith wasn’t one to complain about injuries or illness often, so he’d figured it was serious. Keith had taken a three-hour nap, and that had seemed to solve things.

 

Had it?

 

“Are you sure?” he asks, reaching out to touch Keith’s shoulder gently.

 

Keith shakes him off. “I said I’m fine.”

 

 He pauses, pulling the blanket back around his shoulders. “I just thought I’d check in. You don’t usually let headaches slow you down, and this is the second time this week—“

 

“Nothing’s slowing me down,” he insists, irritation cutting into his words. “Go to bed, Lance.”

 

Lance withdraws, stunned. “Okay. Don’t stay out here too long,” he says softly, but Keith gives no indication that he hears his words. He just keeps looking to the horizon with a levelled gaze.

 

The house feels colder somehow when he re-enters. The moonlight casts shadows on the walls, turns the knickknacks and furniture into ghostly shapes. The floor settles beneath his feet, creaking like footsteps across the room. Once back in the bed, Lance rolls onto his side and stares across the empty half of the mattress. The back of his hand lays flat on the second pillow, his palm skyward. He clenches the hand into a fist, misses the spaces where Keith’s fingers fit between his own.

 

He’s probably just tired. But maybe Lance isn’t imagining things. Maybe they should talk.

 

The fool moon watches him, bright in the darkness of the sky.

 

***

 

They barely need to greet the secretary — Keith simply waves to her with Lance in tow and she passes over a visitor’s badge. They don’t do this very often, but apparently Keith actually has gotten into the Garrison’s good graces since he came back. That surprises Lance. It had taken Shiro, _Takashi Shirogane himself_ , vouching for his good behaviour to get him back in the loop. Apparently even though Shiro had left to work for Earth’s brand-new Galactic Defense And Interstellar Communications office, he still had incredible influence in the Garrison. Or maybe they still felt bad about fucking up one of their brightest graduates. Whatever the case, it seems to have worked out for him.

 

They pause outside when they make it to the simulation room.

 

“I’m really sorry about this,” Keith says, glancing towards the door. “It’s kind of a special case. You’re sure you don’t mind waiting around?”

 

Lance stretches, wincing at the soreness in his arms. Another hoverbike ride, the second this week, still had him clinging to Keith with so much strength that it kind of hurt. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I kept meaning to come back and poke around a bit anyway. It’s been a while.”

 

He nods. He’s wearing a uniform jacket with an embroidered patch that says KOGANE on the breast over his usual black shirt and jeans, which shouldn’t make him look as handsome as he does. Nobody should look that attractive in Garrison-issued orange. “I shouldn’t be more than an hour and a half or so.”

 

“We’re still going on a date after, right? You and me and some schmoozing around the town?” Lance waggles his eyebrows.

 

“Of course.” Keith’s expression doesn’t change, but Lance relishes in the pink tinge that colours his face. They’re not usually so openly affectionate, much less at his workplace, but sometimes Lance can’t resist.

 

“I’ll see you later.”

 

He breaks into a teasing smile. “Don’t piss off Iverson, okay?”

 

His serious reply of “yes, sir” earns him a playful shove. Keith reaches out to squeeze his hand before heading through the doorway and disappearing into the simulation room.

 

That leaves Lance all alone with nothing but a visitor’s pass and enough nervous energy to keep him walking.

 

The Garrison doesn’t necessarily feel _smaller_ now, but it does feel different. It’s the strict atmosphere that gets to him, the press of students and teachers in the halls, the feeling of a thousand eyes on him as he makes his way to the main office— little things that catch him off guard. Even though it’s off-hours and there aren’t that many people roaming around, he still feels watched. The hallways seem more mazelike than they did before, his familiarity with the Garrison’s layout having fallen out of his memory when they’d left. He wonders how Keith manages to work here with such ease, especially after he left on terrible terms.

 

Some time later he ends up in a hallway decked out in accolades, awards and trophies and plaques decorating the white walls and tucked away in displays. This is a part of the Garrison he still knows well — he’d spent many an hour as a cadet cleaning the trophies as punishment for getting in shit he shouldn’t, and would sometimes seek them out after a sim to stare them down in determination. He’d been _so intent_ on getting recognition for something great back in the day. It had been his drive, what had pushed him to be the best in the program.

 

There’s one award that catches his eye, a familiar plaque of silver and steel adorned with five names: Takashi Shirogane, Hunk Garrett, Katie Holt, Keith Kogane, and Lance McClain. _Awarded to five pilots of Voltron for unparalleled service in the protection of the galaxy_ , it read. Underneath the engraving was the symbol of the Coalition, proudly displayed next to the Galaxy Garrison crest. Sam and Matt had received a similar award together, theirs being _Recognition of service in the Voltron War_.

 

Lance brushes his fingers along the plaque, catching slightly on the names etched into the metal. He remembers the day they’d received it well — it had been less than a month into their return to Earth when the Garrison had forked it over. They must have hustled to get it done alongside their diplomas, which they’d gotten the same day in an honorary graduation ceremony. There’s a selfie floating around somewhere in his phone that they took that day; everyone crowded in the frame, decked out in nice clothes and brandishing the plaque towards the camera with ear-to-ear grins. The pictures that Lance took immediately after tell a better story, though.

 

*

  
  
_“Youngest graduate_ ever _!” Pidge proclaimed, throwing a self-righteous middle finger towards Iverson’s office. “And I got my family back without any of your help. Suck it, Garrison!”_

_Keith mirrored her, copying the gesture with only slightly less gusto. He was smiling though, triumphantly clutching his certificate in his other hand. “Ditto for me. I got kicked out and I still got honours.”_

_They high-fived._

_“Watch Iverson just come out of his office and take those back,” Hunk joked from behind them. Lance snorted with laughter. The ceremony had only just finished_ _— it was entirely possible that he was still lurking around, and the thought of Iverson himself making them fork over their awards didn’t seem unlikely, somehow. He pulled up his phone camera and snapped a picture of Keith and Pidge silhouetted against the evening sun._

_“If they want to take my credentials they’re gonna catch these hands,” she called back, turning to face Keith. “You’ll back me up, right?”_

_“How did either of you end up with one of these?” Lance joked, waving his diploma. “After beating up teachers and admitting to breaking into their records, you should both be in jail.”_

_“They probably felt bad,” Hunk said. “Four innocent kids go to their school and accidentally end up in an alien war. I’d give ‘em participation trophies too.”_

_Pidge raced over to throw herself at Hunk, climbing him until she was sitting on his shoulders. He barely reacted, just let her scale him like a tree until she was where she wanted to be. “Participation trophies that’ll get us into Ivy League,” she said._

_“Point taken,” he said, shrugging. The moment nearly dislodged her, but she held on with unparalleled determination. Lance snapped another picture. Pidge pulled a face, but Hunk smiled wide for the camera._

_Shiro, who’d been discussing something with Matt nearby, came over and caught the end of the conversation. He’d gotten away with just the award since he’d already graduated, but they’d given the plaque to him onstage (probably to compensate). “A diploma isn’t a participation trophy,” he pointed out, but under the serious tone he was smiling._

_“Yeah, well, we didn’t pass any final exams, so it might as well be.” Lance shrugged._

_“As your superior officer, I’m shocked and horrified that none of you completed training.” Shiro crossed his arms in mock offense. “But as your friend, congrats. You all deserve it.”_

_“Senior officer who? You kept disappearing,” Keith said, spurring Shiro to push him playfully._

_“Yeah, because I definitely meant to do that,” Shiro said drily.”It was all to further your own character development.”_

_Keith responded by whacking him with his rolled-up diploma, which escalated things into a tussle that everyone eventually ended up in. Lance managed to stay out of the thick of things and got a few hilarious snapshots as a result, including a photo Pidge pegged as ‘the only ugly picture of Shiro in existence’. At one point he’d dropped the phone and stepped on it accidentally, but the cracked screen corner was no one’s fault but his own._

_It was kind of shocking that they’d made it. After everything that had happened, to have the five of them back on Earth splitting hairs over an award seemed ridiculous. Impossible.  If he’d tried to imagine it in the middle of the war, he would have drawn a big fat blank on his future._

_Lance looked back at the scene_ _— at his family, off to the side and talking with the Holts and with Hunk’s family, to the sun setting on the horizon, to his friends having fun._

_Things were still strange, but they felt okay for once._

*

 

That had been the last time they’d all been together.

 

It hadn’t been that long and yet it still felt like forever ago. The by-product of living in close quarters with four other people, he figures, is that their presence starts to feel expected, and when they go away it leaves you feeling empty. It’s worse when they’ve experienced the things they have together — shared a mystical mind bond, flown a five-pilot alien warship, befriended some aliens, saved the universe. The usual team-bonding stuff.

 

They’ve visited each other a couple times, but everyone’s just so damn happy to be back with their families that it’s hard to leave. He thinks back to the week Pidge had decided to take a break from university and had flown down to Cuba to visit him. He still can’t shake the memory of her breaking down into a full-blown panic attack after a nightmare, and only coming down from it when Lance had called Matt and put her on the phone. He remembers going to visit Hunk in his hometown during a summer festival and the two of them having to hide out in an alleyway when fireworks started to explode overhead, holding hands to stay grounded to reality, to remind themselves they weren’t back on the battlefield. He recalls meeting up with Shiro during a visit to Keith’s place, thinks of the distant look in his eyes and the way some things on Earth would catch him off-guard suddenly, violently — police sirens, bright lights, loud voices — things that leave him wild-eyed and dazed. Sometimes Lance will find himself looking to the stars, wondering if the alien castle ship that still haunts his dreams will touch the earth again someday. He catches glimpses of himself in the mirror sometimes — unscarred and unscathed thanks to alien technology that kept him in perfect condition for the front lines.

 

He thinks about the scars that Keith carries on his hands, his back, his face, harsh reminders that his line of work didn’t come equipped with cryopods. Thinks about how Keith still keeps his knife in arms’ reach at all times. Thinks about how Keith has been kind of AWOL since coming back to Earth two years ago. Thinks about Keith’s faraway eyes scanning the sky in the middle of the night.

 

They’ve all changed. Things might be different now, but no one really wants to talk about it.  Maybe they _should_ talk about it, but no one wants to take that first step, or to jump back into memories of Voltron. Not yet.

 

“McClain,” a familiar voice says behind him, startling him out of his thoughts. He almost snaps to attention at the authoritative tone before remembering that he’s not a cadet anymore, and forces himself to relax his stance. Stupid muscle memory. The last thing he needs on this visit is to make himself look like an idiot in front of his boyfriend’s colleagues.

 

He turns right into Iverson’s stern gaze. He may not be Lance’s superior anymore, but he knows how to make someone feel small. So when Lance decides to stand casually and just says “Iverson,” in response, it feels good. A tactful fuck-you if there ever was one.

 

“Back for a visit?” he asks without preamble.

 

Lance nods. “I’m just waiting for Keith. He’s in the sims,” he says, gesturing vaguely back towards the training room. “Something about a special case.”

 

It’s apparent that Iverson knows what he’s referring to, even if Lance himself doesn’t. He nods, his dissecting gaze sliding from him to the award, but he doesn’t say anything further. It’s as though he’s waiting for Lance to confirm something — what, he doesn’t know. Whatever the case, he just nods again and continues down the hallway without another word. When Lance is confident that Iverson isn’t watching anymore, he sticks out his tongue in defiance.

 

Lance manages to make it through the full hour and a half of waiting around before the restlessness starts to get to him. There are only so many places to go check out, so many teachers to make awkward pleasantries with (even the ones like Montgomery, whose classes he’d actually grudgingly liked) before it feels like too much. It’s not much of a surprise when he finds himself back outside the simulator room.

 

He expects Keith to be waiting outside for him, so when he makes it back to the sims to find it still occupied, he’s curious. What kind of tutoring goes this long, especially outside of his regular hours?

 

The door is ajar, open just enough to let him hear voices coming from inside. Lance can’t quite make out what they’re saying, and inches closer to the door with only the smallest bit of guilt. It’s probably none of his business, but he’s curious.

 

He peers through the open door.

 

“— not like anyone’s perfect, you know? Everyone crashes the sims.” Keith is standing opposite a student, a teenage girl wearing a flight uniform. She looks near tears, her arms crossed and her hair loose in her face. Behind her is the open hatch into the fake spaceship, which is illuminated in a wash of red light. Lance doesn’t have to be able to see the screens to know what that means.

 

“But I’ve messed up every single mission we’ve done,” she says, casting her eyes to the floor. She seems to curl more into herself, hugging her arms around her body.  “Jamie and Eleanor want another pilot. If I don’t pass next month—“

 

He halts the girl’s downtrodden speech by putting his hand on her shoulder — a patented Keith comforting technique. Lance has been on the receiving end before. “Hey,” he says, and she looks up at him with tear-filled eyes. “I know it sucks, especially when assessments are coming up. But you couldn’t have gotten into fighter-pilot class without skill, so I _know_ you can do this.”

 

She sniffles. “What if I can’t? What do I do?”

 

“You _can_. Stay calm. Listen to your teammates. Trust your instincts.” Keith advises. “And you remember what I told you last week?”

 

She nods, looking a little more sure of herself — just slightly.

 

“Good. I’ll see you next week. But let me know if you need any extra help, okay?” Keith moves back, and the girl actually gives him a hint of a smile before heading for the door. Lance quickly moves aside to let her pass, and she doesn’t even spare him a glance as she heads for the dorms. He peeks around the corner again before stepping into the simulator room.

 

“Was it ‘patience yields focus’, by any chance?” Lance asks as he makes his way across the room.

 

Keith shuts down the simulator before turning to face him. The lack of light makes the room feel a bit gloomier, stretching shadows on the walls and pulling light from where it spills in from the doorway.

 

“What?”

 

“The advice you gave her before?” Lance goes over to him. “Was that it?”

 

“Are you making fun of me?”

 

“No!” He insists, throwing his hands up in an innocent gesture. “It’s good advice. Has to be, if it’s coming from Shiro.”

 

“Good. Because it was,” Keith admits, and Lance has to stifle his laughter at the seriousness of his expression.

 

He twines their hands together and Keith holds fast, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze. There’s something about the quiet and the dark of the room that makes it feel like they’re truly alone, finally away from prying eyes. Somehow the Garrison still makes him feel kind of watched.

 

“Pilot trouble?” he asks. Keith nods.

 

“She freezes up when things go wrong — and, you know, in a sim, everything goes wrong,” he says. His thumb rubs absentmindedly over Lance’s knuckles. “But she’s getting better.”

 

Lance nods. “She’d better be, with your help.”

 

Keith smiles up at him, and it’s enough to push his worries to the back of his mind. Neither of them had brought up what had happened the other night on the porch, but Lance was so glad to have things feel normal again that he hadn’t cared. They could talk later. For now, everything was good.

 

“One last thing,” Lance says. He lets go of Keith’s hand to walk over to the simulator. He stares it down for a moment before giving it a swift kick, sending a metallic thud echoing through the room. When he’s done he steps back, petty satisfaction pulling his face into a grin.

 

“Lance, what the fuck was that for?”

 

“For making me crash,” he says casually, and hears Keith stifle a laugh behind him.

 

They leave the sim, heading to a better evening outside.

 

***

 

One day, Lance finds a letter addressed to him.

 

Keith had been called in to the Garrison for a meeting on the promise that they’d give him another day off if he made it in. Lance had encouraged him to go — Iverson rarely called him in off-hours, and they still had a couple weeks to spend together before he went back to Cuba. Keith hadn’t been so sure.

 

“You really don’t mind?” Keith had asked, still skeptical at Lance’s insistence.

 

“It’s fine. I’ll just hang out. Steal your food. Go for a joyride. Go to the cliffs and throw things off them for fun,” he’d joked, and the way Keith had half-smiled made him feel lighter.

 

“Okay, I’ll go,” Keith had said. “But you’re not taking the bike. I need it.”

 

“Rude.”

 

“Gotta go.” The swat to his shoulder had been playful, nonchalant. It had been followed by a kiss, then another, then a third, and then a half dozen more until Keith had finally pulled away. “Okay, now I really do have to go. I’ll be back in a bit,” he’d promised before grabbing his bag and heading for the door.

 

Lance hadn’t done any of those things. He’d decided instead to clean up a bit without disrupting Keith’s organizational system. They hadn’t paid much attention to upkeep in the past couple of days, and he didn’t really want to spend too much time putting things back in order before he left. That would be a terrible way to spend his last day. The kitchen had been easy enough to tackle, but the living room had proved to be a little more complicated. There was just so much stuff, so many bits and pieces that adorned the room, that it was hard to know what Keith would want where. He’d been in the process of putting some papers in a pile when a sheet of looseleaf had fallen out of the stack.

 

When Lance grabs it he sees his name. He expects it to be a to-do list (ha ha ha), but when he skims the words it becomes apparent that it’s not. His name is at the top of the paper, addressing it to him the way Keith’s letters usually do. The first line had clearly been crossed out and rewritten several times, but he can read it easily enough;

 

_Lance, I need to tell you something._

 

Lance pauses. Unease bubbles in the pit of his stomach. Already he can tell this is something that he’s not meant to read. It’s addressed to him, sure, but if it’s in a stack of paper that doesn’t belong to him and it hasn’t already been mailed to him, it’s not for him. He should put it back. Keith won’t notice.

 

And yet the urgency in it grabs him. It’s in a bunch of papers Keith had been poring over the other day, meaning it was probably written recently. It makes him nervous, twists his insides around worse than their three AM conversation had. Keith’s letters had never sounded like this before.

 

He puts the rest of the stack down and sits down on the couch to keep reading.

 

_I don’t even know what this is. I just know that I don’t want to do any of this alone. I probably won’t even end up sending you this letter, because it’s just going to fuck you up and that’s not fair. You don’t deserve that. You don’t deserve any of this._

_I feel lost. Like coming back to Earth didn’t give me anything. Like things are going badly when they definitely aren’t. They shouldn’t feel like that now, right? But being back here just makes me feel... I don’t know. Trapped? Stuck? Whatever it is, it sucks. And it’s lonely. When you’re not here it kind of kills me, because you’re the only goddamn thing on this planet anymore that makes me feel like I’m flying. Like things are going to be okay._

_I don’t know what to do._

_I wish I could spit this out right.  I’m fucking scared, Lance. But I don’t want to make you scared too._

The next line is crossed out as well, though still legible;

 

_I love you too much for that._

The words are like a slap in the face.

 

Guilt rises in his throat like bile, threatens to choke him with emotion as his eyes skim the words a second time, a third time, until they start to blur. They should be past this. He’d _thought_ they were past this, damn it. He’d thought they’d worked things out last year in that terrible vacation week, when Lance had confronted his own demons in the cave. Keith had said he felt like he was meant to be alone, and Lance had been adamant in proving it wasn’t true. They were going to have everything they’d been denied in their tumultuous lives as Paladins. They deserve it. After everything they’ve done, they goddamn deserve it.

 

And still Keith is in pain. He’s _suffocating_ here, trapped on this stupid rock, and Lance hasn’t done anything to help.

 

He forgets where he is until he hears the hoverbike’s engine idle and then turn over, until the front door creaks open and he hears a call of “Lance?” that’s so terribly casual it breaks his heart all over again.

 

Keith crosses the threshold into the living room. His eyes widen at the sight of Lance’s tear-stained face and his expression shifts to one of surprise and concern. He has his backpack slung over one shoulder, is still wearing the stupid orange Garrison jacket that makes him look so professional. The bike keys dangle in his grip.

 

“Lance, what happened? What’s wrong?” Keith takes a step forward. His eyes catch sight of the paper and he freezes when he recognizes what Lance holds in his shaking grip. His hand, extended towards him, stops in place.

 

Lance rises from the couch.  “I know this looks bad—“

 

Keith steps back. His fingers clench white-knuckled around the keys. “You read that?” he asks, and the hurt tone he uses pulls at Lance’s heartstrings. His eyes flicker down to the rest of the papers.

 

“I didn’t mean to. I was cleaning and it fell out of a bunch of stuff. I shouldn’t have—“

 

“But you did,” Keith says hollowly. He takes another step back, eyes narrowed in distrust.

 

“I’m sorry, okay? But you shouldn’t do things like this.” Lance waves the note in his hand like a white flag, and the way Keith flinches at the action immediately makes him feel worse. “You can’t hide stuff like this from me. You’re _hurting_.”

 

“I’m _fine_ ,” he says, a fact refuted immediately by his guarded tone.

 

“You keep saying that!” He’s aware that his voice is rising, but he can’t help it. “Why don’t you tell me when things are wrong?”

 

“Because you wouldn’t understand!” Keith snaps. “You never feel alone. You have a family and a home and a life. All I have is you, and you’re never here!”

 

The words are a knife in his chest.

 

They hurt Keith too, judging by the way his face goes slack when he says them. The gravity and harshness in them must hit him hard, because before Lance can say anything, he’s gone. The door scrapes against the frame when he pushes through it, scoring lines in the wood like scars. Lance hears the bike start up again and scream off into the distance, the disrupted air rattling the windowpanes.

 

He falls back against the couch and puts his head in his hands. The letter flutters to the floor, slow as a lost feather.

 

Bickering over stupid stuff is one thing. It’s how they operate, how they’ve always been even before everything had changed. _This_ is something else entirely. Fighting puts a bad taste in his mouth, churns his stomach in a way that it never did before they’d gotten together. They hadn’t had a real fight in months — once they’d started to get used to being in a relationship things had gotten easier. There’d been an adjustment period, sure, but they’d expected it. Neither of them had thought things would be perfect immediately.

 

Perfection, nothing. Lance feels like the earth has fallen away beneath his feet.

 

***

 

When it gets dark and he still isn’t back, Lance decides he needs to go after him. Keith holds onto his grief the way a child holds their blanket; tightly, trailing, always in reach even if he lets go. It’s not a good mindset to be in, not when he’s already struggling.

 

He doesn’t reply to any of his texts once Lance cools down enough to start trying to coax him back. Either he’s left his phone or turned it off. That makes things harder, but not impossible. Lance will search the entire desert for Keith, if it comes to that.

 

Luckily for him he already has an idea of where to start.

 

The stone structures that border the cave aren’t far — an hour to an hour and a half away, a fact that Lance continually appreciates as he makes his way towards them. The team had walked there the day they’d found the Blue Lion, and he’d griped that the heat was making him sweaty and that his feet hurt the entire way there. That was before they’d really known each other, and when Keith hadn’t been ignoring his whining he’d been glaring daggers in his direction. The second time, a year ago, they’d taken the bike. Lance still remembers the anxiety that had gripped him on the ride there, how wrong the whole thing had felt, how it had all come to a head in the cave and he’d cried at the emptiness inside him as he stood before the ancient lion carvings.

 

Keith had comforted him. And that night, everything that had been building between them had broken in a wild, emotional wave. Lance had kissed him.

 

That should have been their happy ever after. It would have been, if real life took its cues from romantic clichés.

 

Now, under the sky’s silver glow, the journey is very different. Lance approaches the ravine that leads down to the cave. His heart rate jump-starts when he catches sight of Keith’s hoverbike parked at the canyon’s edge. It’s directly opposite the rocks that look like Voltron’s Fraunhofer line, the place Keith had known to come looking when they’d first started searching, and they break the horizon the way a city carves a skyline. It would be hard to spot Keith himself except for the bright moonlight that illuminates the canyon, and for the fact that Lance knows exactly where to look.

 

He knows that Keith sees him. He watches as Lance starts to make his way up the canyon wall to where he’s perched himself, on a ledge overlooking the ravine. He’d pointed it out the last time they’d come to the cave together, mentioned offhandedly that the view was nice. Quiet. Good for thinking. Lance would probably appreciate it more if it weren’t for the nerves wrestling in his gut, accompanied by the very real fear of falling all the way back to the ground.

 

He climbs anyway.

 

Keith stares him down when he makes it up to the ledge and sits down next to him, but doesn’t do anything else. Lance stares back, unsure of where to begin.

 

“Hey,” he says softly — a peace offering.

 

Keith keeps watching him. He’s curled into himself, knees drawn to his chest and his face half-hidden by his arm. When he finally speaks it’s quiet, his voice catching slightly around the edges of his words; “I figured you’d know where to find me.”

 

“I followed the Keith Geiger-counter,” Lance says automatically, then pauses. He’s probably the last person Keith wants to see right now, and jokes probably aren’t helping. He tries again, quieter this time; “I just got worried when you didn’t come back.”

 

Keith says nothing. Lance decides to get right to the point. He breathes in deeply and exhales before he continues, trying to get his still-wild emotions under at least a bit of control.

 

“I just — I fucked up, okay? I’m sorry that I read the letter. I shouldn’t have stuck my nose into stuff that wasn’t mine.” He crosses his legs, trying to make himself comfortable on the rocky ledge. They could be here for a while. “I’ve just been worried about you. That’s not an excuse, but... I don’t like it when you don’t tell me things. It makes me feel like I can’t help you.”

 

Keith still stays quiet, but he hasn’t made a move to interrupt him or tell him to leave. That’s a win in his book.

 

“Will you tell me what’s been going on?”

 

Keith doesn’t meet his eyes, but Lance refuses to break his gaze. The moonlight catches the planes and curves of his face beautifully, reflecting bright in his dulled eyes. When he still says nothing, Lance reaches up to run a hand through his silky hair.

 

“C’mon. Talk to me, Starshine.”

 

Keith stares out over the desert, a million miles away even as Lance feels the brush of skin. He hasn’t looked this distant in years. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t push him off the way he did the other night. That’s something.

 

“There’s more.”

 

Lance is confused. “Huh?”

 

“The letters. I think I wrote a hundred of them, trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I almost told you that many times.” His voice is heavy, cautious, tired. His tense posture muffles his words. “And I still couldn’t spit it out.”

 

“Yeah, well, you’ve never been an open book,” Lance points out.

 

That draws a quiet laugh out of him. “Guess you’re right.”

 

Silence falls over them.

 

“Am I doing something wrong?” Lance asks, leaning further in. Their shoulders brush. The touch sends static across his skin where they make contact. “Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

 

Keith shakes his head firmly. “No, it’s not that. I’m just — I’m _bad_ at this, Lance. At handling emotions. At staying in one place. At talking.”

 

Lance props his head on Keith’s shoulder. “You can share the load, you know. Not just with me — with everyone else. None of us want you to feel like this.”

 

He reaches out slightly to brush Keith’s pinkie with his. Keith mirrors the gesture, hooking Lance’s finger with his own. A promise.

 

Keith sighs. “I don’t know why you’re still here. After what I said, I thought you’d leave.”

 

“I’m still here because I love you.”

 

At that, he seems to startle. He freezes the way he had in the cabin, but this time is different. His eyes go wide, but Lance can see something else underneath the apprehension in his features; an underlying emotion that’s been missing from him for a while. “You just — did you say— “

 

Lance can’t help it; he laughs and brings his hand up to tangle in Keith’s hair. He knocks their foreheads together gently. “It’s not like you didn’t _know_ ,” he says softly.

 

“But when you _say_ it, it’s...” He trails off when Lance moves his hand to cup his cheek, to trace his jawline. Their pinkies are still entwined.

 

There’s a moment when neither of them say anything, and then a slight shudder runs through him. He moves in to press his face into Lance’s shoulder. Lance reaches up to embrace him with his free hand, following the slopes and curves of him to rest it against the small of his back. Keith’s arm is around him, his hand gripping Lance’s shoulder.

 

When he shudders again, Lance pulls away curiously. “Are you okay?”

 

“How can you say that after how I treated you?” he asks, his words muffled by their closeness. A soft, choked sob escapes him, and Lance pulls him closer, tightens his hold like that’ll stop the tears.

 

“You need to hear it,” he replies, lacing his words with truth. “You said something way back when about being alone. We aren’t doing that again.”

 

Keith digs his hands further into their embrace. “I’m so sorry,” he says quietly. “I love you, Lance. I’m so sorry for what I said.”

 

They stay like that, letting emotion crest and break over them like the tide, until dawn glows on the horizon. Lance doesn’t let go.

 

***

 

After that, they talk often.

 

They let the words come, no matter if they’re unsure or confused or painful. They agree to put the old no-secrets rule back into play, because the last thing they need in a relationship is to have _this_ continue. Sometimes ‘no-secrets’ emerges as long rants, or talks that turn into comfortable silence at the end. Sometimes it’s one-word answers, and Lance doesn’t push Keith to elaborate on those if he doesn’t want to. Sometimes it’s not words as much as touches; he’ll curl up in Keith’s arms and let himself rest, let him card his hair and trace lines on his skin. Keith will lean into him in return; let himself be caught in an embrace, let Lance rub his back until his heartbeat slows and his mind calms. And for every good day, there’s one, two, three bad days that can follow it — because things aren’t going to change immediately, but at least now they’re starting to make sense. They talk about everything and anything, because after this long without talking there’s a lot to say.

 

And ‘I love you’s are everywhere. No grand gestures — just small reminders, pressed into kisses and held in hands. Yelled across the house when they can’t see each other, or whispered in the dead of night. Mumbled over breakfast when they’re barely awake, or spoken into skin when they can’t sleep. It’s in gestures, in words, in thoughts. It’s like everything has changed and nothing has, because in a way that’s how love works.

 

Lance’s last day at the cabin is painful. But they know that things will be okay now, and that makes it hurt a bit less.

 

***

 

He puts a new plan of action into play, after a several months of planning and scheduling. It’s technically a breach of the ‘no-secrets’ rule, but Lance hopes that Keith will forgive him when he sees what he has planned. After all the effort he’s put in, the payoff better be good.

 

It’s an idea three months in the making, planned around their schedules and chosen to coincide with their only overlapping break of the year. Once Lance finishes his semester and Keith gets through the last stage of pilot assessments, they finally have some time together and they intend to enjoy it, responsibilities be damned.

 

That’s how Lance and Keith find themselves back at the Galaxy Garrison — with a lot of secrecy and Lance’s careful lead towards the launch pad.

 

 

Keith fixes him with a curious look. He’d been giving them to Lance all morning, from the time he’d been told to pack a bag up until now. He shoulders his backpack as they walk along, pulling it back into place from where it’s slipped down his arm. “When you said you had a vacation in mind, this wasn’t what I pictured.”

 

“This isn’t the vacation,” Lance says, reaching up to pull on his ponytail. “This is just where it starts.”

 

“Please just tell me. I hate surprises.”

 

“You’ll like this one,” he says. He brings a hand up to shield the burning sun from his face, scanning the horizon. There are several components to this plan, a lot of small moving parts that he’d had to line up perfectly. But all of that was fine — he hadn’t become Voltron’s top tactician for nothing. Keith follows his gaze, but there’s nothing there. Nothing yet.

 

Lance pauses, taking a moment to exhale before they round the corner. He looks to his boyfriend. “Are you ready to be surprised?”

 

Keith groans. “Let’s just get this over with.”

 

Lance’s pulse starts up nervously when he catches sight of the three figures waiting at the edge of the launch pad, three familiar silhouettes that tug his face into a grin and make his chest warm. He waves wildly, and when they’re spotted the reaction is instantaneous.

 

Keith’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline in surprise, and before he can react the group has already rushed over and he’s caught in one of Hunk’s patented rib-cracking hugs. It’s enough to lift him off the ground completely, and Lance breaks into a fit of giggles when Keith’s ‘deer-in-headlights’ stare meets his.

 

“We missed you!” Hunk says, finally putting Keith back on the ground to sweep Lance up next. He’s expecting it, though, and clings to his friend like a koala when he’s lifted as well. God, he’s missed this. “You’re not allowed to hide from us anymore, okay?” he chides, directing the comment to Keith as he sets Lance down.

 

Keith crosses his arms in his usual way, but he’s smiling. “Who said I was hiding? You all knew where I was.”

 

On his other side, Pidge socks him once, hard, in the upper arm, before stepping back to face him properly. Lance winces in sympathy; years of training have honed everyone’s hand-to-hand skills, but Pidge, perpetually at a disadvantage by being small, hits extra hard. Plus, her hands are bony and they  _hurt_.  He’s been on their receiving end more than once.

 

“Ow!” Keith clearly wasn’t expecting it, and glares down at her while his hand goes to the spot she punched. “Pidge, what the fuck? Not even a ‘hi’?”

 

“That’s how I show affection,” Pidge says, the perfect picture of wide-eyed innocence. “Also, hi.”

 

“’Affection’, my ass,” he mutters.

 

Shiro drops his backpack without ceremony and pulls Keith in for another hug. It’s different, though — it always has been with Shiro. Lance had been jealous of their friendship way back when. Their bond goes deeper than anyone else’s, but once he’d pulled his head out of his ass he’d respected that. And seeing them together now, the way they fold in so naturally, the way their friendship comes out in easy ways, Lance is just happy that Keith’s happy.

 

They pull away from the hug, and Shiro smiles at them — both of them. “It’s good to see you,” he says.

 

Lance sees the moment Keith’s eyes catch Pidge’s backpack and suitcase, dropped carelessly at her side, and Hunk’s duffle bag, slung over his shoulder. He looks back to Lance and raises an eyebrow. “Is this the surprise?”

 

“It’s part of it.”

 

If stares caused physical harm, Lance’s skin would have holes burnt into it from Keith. He seems to have given up trying to get answers out of him — probably a good thing, because Lance thinks if he gets grilled any more about what’s happening he’s going to slip and ruin all the effort of keeping things under wraps.

 

Dust skitters along the empty tarmac, streaking red across the black surface of the launch pad. The Galaxy Garrison is mostly unpopulated now, a glass half-empty in the wake of summer vacation. Lance had snagged special permission to get access, pulling his ‘former-Defender-Of-The-Universe’ trump card into play. He doesn’t do it often — usually it’s just to get out of chores back home or something like that. (“Sorry, the paladin of the Blue Lion and Red Lion doesn’t have to do dishes. That’s, like, rule _numero uno_ in the paladin handbook.”) This time he felt it was necessary. Here’s hoping it pays off.

 

It seems like it does a moment later, when something in the air changes. A speck of light appears in the sky, streaking down to Earth like a falling star. A loud roar drums against their ears and makes everyone step back on impulse from the launchpad. Lance looks away to look at Keith instead, who’s staring up at the sky the way he has been for months. This time it’s not longing he sees in his eyes. Not loneliness. Not yearning.

 

It’s hope.

 

The Castle of Lions docks delicately — which is probably not an adjective usually used to describe a spaceship landing, but it’s the word that pops into Lance’s head. When it touches down the engines shift back into spires and turrets befitting an alien castle. They might have all been ace pilots, but there are two people that have held that title longer than any of them, and in his opinion they’re far more deserving. It hums as it powers down, rumbling the ground beneath their feet.

 

Lance throws an arm around Keith’s shoulders. “ _This_ is the surprise.”

 

The castle’s doors whoosh open a moment later. Lance has been prepared to see Allura and Coran since he started planning the trip, but his emotions still get the better of him. While he’s been in contact with everyone since they came back, staying in touch with the Alteans has been harder. Being across the universe doesn’t exactly warrant good cell service, and putting the galaxy back in order means there’s always work to do, people to talk to, planets to visit. The Paladins haven’t been all together for about a year, but the team has been separated longer than that.

 

When Allura and Coran rush down the steps and into a group hug, Lance knows he’s made the right decision.

 

When they break apart, Allura’s eyes are shining. “I’m enacting a new mission. New Altea needs to maintain diplomatic relations with Earth every six phoebs.”

 

“I’ll make it a priority at Communications,” Shiro promises, and she smiles.

 

“Hello Paladins!” Coran says, enthusiastic as ever. “We heard you were in need of a vacation, so we wormholed in as fast as we could!”

 

“That’s a lie and we all know it.” Pidge says. “You had three months to prepare, old man.”

 

“Well, we had to triage between disassembling the Voltron Coalition and planning a trip, Number Five. These things take time.”

 

“Three months?” Keith asks, training his wide-eyed stare on the group. “You planned this for three months?”

 

Lance nods. “Pretty much right after our last visit,” he says, and the way Keith’s face softens at his confirmation makes the sun shining down on them pale in comparison.

 

Allura steps forward. Her hand comes up to rest on Keith’s shoulder and he mirrors her smile. Once upon a time, the contact might have made Lance jealous. But not now — not anymore.

 

“We heard you were the reason this trip was needed,” she says. “So it only makes sense that you pick the first planet we visit.”

 

Keith looks back to Lance with his crooked smile. “I might have a place in mind,” he says.

 

***

 

Lance makes himself back at home on the castle immediately. When the automatic nighttime sequence kicks in, the first thing he does is drag a blanket up to the observation deck. He lays back and watches the stars, charts the constellations they’d made up way back when. The rest of the group has gone in for the night, ready to go to another planet the next day. They’ve planned a series of jumps for the next spicolian movement, hopping from star system to star system to catch up with old friends and visit a few locales they missed the first time around. Being on the frontlines of a war didn’t leave a lot of time for tourism, a fact the group is determined to amend.

 

The door opens and the sound of footsteps enter the room. A figure makes its way to Lance before seating himself on the blanket next to him.

 

“Hey,” Keith says quietly. He moves to lay down next to him. His hand catches Lance’s.

 

“Enjoying the view?” Lance jokes.

 

Keith’s answer is a kiss. Deep, gentle, soft. Lance catches him smiling against his mouth and it makes him feel like he’s floating, like the ship has fallen away beneath them and left them untethered in open space. Maybe someone flipped the gravity switch again. Or maybe Keith kissing him is just that good.

 

They break apart and Keith regards him with shining eyes. “I can’t believe you planned a space vacation for me.”

 

Lance bumps their noses together. “You kept looking at the sky. I figured I could help with that.”

 

“You did,” he says.

 

They shift into a different position, lying on their backs to stargaze. Lance claims Keith’s chest as his pillow, enjoying the calm rise and fall of his breathing and the steady beat of his heart. Their hands aren’t quite laced together — just their pinkies are entwined, hooked together in a promise of something more. And by now, Lance can tell there will be more. He feels like he’s given Keith his all already, but he knows he’d still give Keith the universe if that would make him happy.

 

Keith seems to catch this vibe, because he moves to take his hand properly. “Thank you,” he whispers.

 

“Anytime,” he replies.

 

They watch the stars drift by like snowflakes on the wind.

**Author's Note:**

> HMU on tumblr @ either espressopidge (VLD only blog) or ghiblirey (main)


End file.
